Трек 13_05

There comes an end to all things; and this surrender to my evil at last destroyed the balance of my soul. And yet I was not greatly worried; the fall seemed natural, like a return to the old days before I had made my discovery . . .

It was a fine, clear January day, and I sat in the sun on a bench in Regent’s Park, feeling sleepy and at rest. After all, I remember thinking, I was like my neighbours; and then I smiled, comparing myself with other men, and thinking how much good I had done of late. And at the very moment the thought entered my head, a sickness came over me, with all the old pains, and that horror of the spirit that I knew so well. These passed away and left me faint. And then, as the faintness left me in its turn, I began to be aware of a change in the direction of my thoughts, a greater courage, a lack of care for danger. I looked down. My clothes hung loosely upon my limbs and the hand that lay on my knee was lean and hairy. I was once more Edward Hyde. A moment before I had been safe, respected, wealthy-the cloth being laid for me in the dining-room at home; and now I was hunted, houseless, a known murderer, with every man’s hand against me.

My reason did not fail me, and Hyde rose to the importance of the moment. My drugs were locked away in a cupboard in my study; how was I to reach them? That was the problem I set myself to solve. The laboratory door I had closed. If I tried to enter by the house, my own servants would seize me, and call for the police. I saw that I must employ another hand, and thought of Lanyon. How was he to be reached, how persuaded? Supposing that I escaped capture in the streets, how was I to make my way into his presence? And how should I, an unknown and unwanted visitor, persuade the famous doctor to break into the study of his fellow-worker, Dr. Jekyll? Then I remembered that of my original character one part still remained to me: I could write my own hand. Once I remembered that, I saw the way that I must follow.

At once, I arranged my clothes as best I could, called a cab, and drove to an hotel in Portland Street, the name of which I chanced to remember. At my appearance, the driver burst into a laugh. I turned upon him with a look of devilish anger, and the smile vanished from his face-happily for him-yet more happily for myself, for in another instant I would have set hands on him and killed him. At the hotel, as I entered, I stared about me with so terrible a look that I saw the servants tremble. There was no laughter at my expense. They led me to a private room, and brought me pen and paper. Hyde in danger of his life was a creature new to me: shaken with anger, ready to murder, longing to strike and inflict pain. Yet the creature mastered his temper with a great effort of will; wrote two letters, one to Lanyon and one to Poole, and sent them out with directions that they should be registered.

For the rest of that day, he sat over the fire in the private room, biting his nails, and trying to control his anger. There he dined, sitting alone with his fears; and from there, when night came, he set out in the corner of a closed cab, and was driven to and fro about the streets of the city. He, I say-I cannot say, I. That child of the devil had nothing human about him; nothing lived in him but fear and hatred. And when at last, thinking the driver had begun to grow suspicious, he paid off the cab and went on foot, dressed in his odd clothing, among the walkers of the night, his fear and his anger raged like a storm within him. He walked fast, hunted by his fears, choosing the darkest and quietest streets, counting the minutes that still divided him from midnight. Once a woman spoke to him, offering a box of lights. He struck her in the face, and she ran from him, crying.

When I came to myself at Lanyon’s, the horror of my old friend affected me perhaps: I do not know; it was at least but a drop in the sea to the horror with which Henry Jekyll looked back upon the past ten hours. I gave little thought to the words in which Lanyon cursed and condemned me. It was partly in a dream that I came home to my own house and got into bed. I slept well after the cares of the day and awoke weakened but refreshed. I still hated, and feared, the thought of the brute that slept within me, and I had not forgotten the awful dangers of the day before; but I was once more at home, in my own house and close to my drugs; and gratitude for my escape filled the whole of my being.